A Healthy Alternative to Work

Concert, up too late

2008-05-23T09:21:00.004-04:00

I went to see Scythian at The Haunt in Ithaca last night. The guys put on a great show -- initially, they'd planned on playing a quick set and hitting the road, since so few people had shown up. But by the time they'd gotten about 40 minutes in, a good-size crowd had gathered, and the band played on, shutting the place down at 1 a.m.

Afterwards, Joey, Dan and Nathan came back to my folks' house in Cortland, and we spent a while watching Darkness videos on YouTube, eating hummus, and telling animal jokes.

Around 4 a.m., Joe told me, "I'm dark and excessive. You're excessively dark."

It's amazing how every so often someone can sum things up with incredible accuracy and economy of words.

Which reminds me, I have some 40 pages of Scythian-related interviews and narrative that I need to boil down into something meaningful at some point. It's been sitting in my computer and weighing on my conscience for at least six months now.

Fortunately, we reigned it in last night and were responsible citizens. The bad news is that I only got about two hours of sleep before I had to head out for police beat, so I'm feeling a bit punchy this morning.

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Burn it

2008-05-12T18:54:00.002-04:00

Despite his nearly insurmountable delegate lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is trailing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) by about 40 percentage points in that bastion of free thought known as West Virginia, where residents will cast their votes Tuesday in the state's democratic primary.

Why? Some quotes from some of Mingo County's itinerant scholars:

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

...

Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and “values”, stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding “anti-American” sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim – an unfounded rumour that has circulated on the internet for months – despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr Wright’s church in Chicago. Others mentioned his refusal to wear a Stars and Stripes badge and controversial remarks by his wife, Michelle, who described America as “mean” and implied that she had never been proud of the US until her husband ran for president.

...

Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. “I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president,” he said.

We all know that "full-blooded American" is West Virginian for "white person," right? And I wonder who Mr. Simpson "heard" the rumor that Obama was Muslim from -- maybe it was from the state's senior democratic senator, Robert Byrd, who got his start in politics in the Ku Klux Klan?

The good news, I suppose, is that the nomination isn't going to be decided by any kind of "democracy" at all, but by mysterious people known as "superdelegates" who nobody knew anything about before January this year. While that's somewhat disenfranchising, it's a bit of a relief given that it'll keep the dolts in that intersection of the Rust Belt and the Bible Belt from having anything to say about who's running the country a year from now.

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Eureka -- I've found it!

2008-05-11T15:23:00.004-04:00

It's been a long, hard journey, but I have found it: the worst movie ever made.

Throughout the years, various critics have compiled lists of what they consider the worst movies ever. I've seen many of these pictures, which are indeed bad, but all have paled in comparison to the steaming pile of dogshit that is Cannibal Holocaust 2.

Before you point this out, I'll acknowledge that you're right -- anything called Cannibal Holocaust 2 really wasn't shooting for the Academy Awards in the first place. But this movie moves beyond the fun, party-atmosphere badness provided by sheer camp and exploitation and elevates awfulness to an entirely new plane of existence. I'm unsure if I even have the vocabulary necessary to explain how truly god-awful this film is.

Okay, some background information. First, I only recently became aware of what is now known as the "Cannibal Boom" of the late 1970s, during which directors (almost exclusively Italian) churned out a surprising number of cannibal-themed movies to grindhouses and drive-ins across the U.S. Cannibal Holocaust, which made its way to theaters in 1979, was considered the grisly pinnacle of the short-lived trend -- and it also was the first movie (at least that I know of) to use the faux-documentary style (a la The Blair Witch Project and, more recently, Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead) to lend the film an air of realism.

It inspired a host of knock-offs, including the thoroughly unpleasant Cannibal Ferox and, naturally, Cannibal Holocaust 2.

The original Cannibal Holocaust is gruesome almost all the way through, and I'm not proud of having seen it when all is said and done. But it's Bridge on the River Kwai compared to the sequel, which begins in a Brazilian courtroom where a young woman is on trial for murder. The majority of the action takes the form of flashbacks as she provides testimony detailing the murder (and decapitation) of her parents and her subsequent abduction by a tribe of "headhunters." As the story -- such as it is -- unfolds, she eventually falls in love with one of the tribesmen and exacts revenge on her parents' real murderers (who aren't the natives at all... that's a spoiler, but I'm not ruining this for anyone, because hopefully you will never, ever waste the hour and a half watching this piece of celluloid garbage).

There's not much else to it, really. Being one in the long line of Italian horror exports, it's horribly dubbed and the acting makes your local elementary school's last Christmas pageant seem like something fit for Carnegie Hall. The heroine narrates some of the scenes and provides the kind of commentary you'd expect from the explanatory boxes in Archie comics. The whole thing is remarkably boring, and winds up being something of a fake documentary on a tribe of people who do not exist. The film also has an almost childlike racism to it.

In short, this is a film that has absolutely no redeeming characteristics. It's awful from start to finish and from top to bottom. And it's so boring that you can't even laugh at the hideousness of it.

I'm not sure what it is, but I have a certain love for truly horrible movies -- I got kicks out of obscure camp horror movies like Slugs and Blood Beach, and the Friday the 13th movies are a hoot. For whatever reason, a movie can at some point move beyond bad and into this weird "good" category, where you enjoy it for its hilarious awfulness. However, Cannibal Holocaust 2 moves beyond bad, skips over that weird "good" category, and dives headfirst into a whole new level of horrid.

I had read that it is considered the last of the cannibal movies, and now I understand -- Cannibal Holocaust 2 was actually bad enough to destroy an entire subgenre of film. That sounds like exaggeration, but trust me, it isn't.

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Sunday night rumination

2008-04-27T20:09:00.003-04:00

Today I read back through some of the posts I've written here years ago -- some news analysis from back in 2005, specifically.

Then I clicked back to the current posts -- and the only things I've really had the energy to write lately are "live blogs" of rotten horror movies... which I haven't even had the patience to really finish.

And it's not as if there isn't anything to write about. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still squabbling over the Democratic nomination, there are still wars going on (we hit the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. troops dead some weeks back), and the American economy is poised to take a headlong trip down the shitter. So where's my excitement? Where's this urge I once had to throw in my two cents about everything?

I think the problem, at least in part, is that the Problem is too big. As a people, we Americans are too complacent, lazy, ignorant, and comfortable to be bothered with anything -- at least for more than five or ten minutes or so. And there's just too many huge issues to try to take on: the epic failure of the current administration is a good example. Where do you start? The war? The collapsing value of the dollar? The fact that Americans are now pariahs wherever else we dare to venture in the world? The decline of our education system despite promises of "No Child Left Behind"?

On that last note, a friend of mine told me she'd recently read a study that showed that some 40 percent of high school students now use "emoticons" on text-script in their homework assignments. She's a teacher, and said she'd just graded an assignment that included "idk" as an answer. For the un-unenlightened, that's cellphone-ese for "I Don't Know."

I'd be more inclined to cobble some thoughts together on the presidential hopefuls who are crisscrossing the country at the moment hoping to shore up enough support to get elected in November. But unfortunately, the three of them -- McCain, Obama, and Clinton -- all appeared in videotaped messages at the WWE's Monday Night Raw this past week. I lost all respect I once had for Obama as soon as I heard him say, "Can you smell what Barack is cookin'?"

More importantly, I've lost all remaining respect I had for American voters. All three of the remaining (viable) candidates have large campaign staffs whose job it is to tell them where to appear and what to say to have the maximum impact on the electorate -- and all three agreed to appear on Monday Night Raw. This indicates to me that American voters have been measured as perhaps the stupidest demographic on the planet, vying with sub-groups such as "NASCAR Fans," "pre-frontal lobe lobotomy patients," and "Crossing Over viewers" for the coveted bottom slot.

Be that as it may, I've basically had it with being an American. I don't want to be associated with a people who need presidential candidates to appear on a professional wrestling/gay ballet show to get them excited about voting.

I'll end on that note, because I really don't know where else to take this. Current events are just depressing, so maybe for the time being, I'll stick with old horror movies.

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Another old-school horror movie live-blog

2008-04-22T07:01:00.005-04:00

This is always fun – I pop in an old horror movie, and write down my thoughts as the film unfolds. Tonight, it’s Dario Argento’s Suspiria, regarded as one of the scariest movies of all time.

Suspiria is dated 1977, and is apparently the first in some trilogy about evil mothers. It’s supposedly a legendary horror film, and it features music by the Italian rock band “Goblin,” who also provided music for several of Argento’s buddy George A. Romero’s zombie pictures (Argento’s daughter, Asia Argento, is an actress who had a lead role in Romero’s latest zombie apocalypse movie, Land of the Dead).

I’ll admit that I didn’t think of doing this until I’d started the movie up and gotten about nine minutes in, so here’s a synopsis of the first little bit. And be aware, there are spoilers coming up.

An American ballet student, Suzy Banyon, has decided to study at a prestigious school in Germany. She arrives (after some storybook-type narration over the opening credits) around 10 at night, and catches a cab to the school during a torrential downpour. When she arrives, there’s another female student fleeing in terror, and Suzy isn’t allowed into the building. A voice over the intercom tells her “Go away! I don’t know you!”

Suzy gets back into the cab and heads for a hotel, picking up the woman fleeing through the woods on her way. The two hole up in a very strangely-decorated hotel, and the German student tells Suzy that she must escape from the school – but for reasons that she couldn’t possibly explain.

“It’s too… fantastic,” she says, unhelpfully.

While she’s getting set for bed, a window in the bedroom flies open, scaring her. Suzy tells her to calm down… which puts us at:

00:09:20 – The girls are milling around the hotel room, and the tense Goblin music is building. Something bad is going to happen very soon, and if Dario Argento’s reputation is anything to go on, it’s probably going to be very gory.

00:09:55 – Blonde student is approaching the open window. This is never good.

00:10:27 – Huh? Nothing’s happened yet, but the musical tension hasn’t shut off. Blondie seems intent on hanging out right next to this window. Where’s that Alan Brooks character from The Trollenberg Terror? He’d get her mind off her troubles with a healthy shot of Scotch from his trusty flask.

00:10:39 – Nervous inner-monologue from the German girl: “Must… open… scary… window… for no… apparent… reason…!”

00:11:08 – Woah! Creepy moment Number 1: While dummy is staring out the window into what seems to be a loaded clothesline (who leaves laundry out on a line in a monsoon? And who has a clothesline up right next to the ninth floor of a hotel? What the hell is up with Germans?), she holds up a lamp to the window, and two weird disembodied green eyes suddenly stare back at her. Since this is a horror movie, and we couldn’t have two characters discussing and rationally dealing with something that screwed up, I’m afraid Miss German Dance Student is not long for this world.

00:13:40 – Well, I certainly called that one. The killer is apparently a somewhat hairy man’s arm, which comes out of nowhere and forces the German girl’s head through the glass window (she never really got around to opening it). Suffice it to say that she is now very, very dead. To top things off, the Killer Arm drops her through a stained-glass window on the roof, and the falling glass manages to kill another woman who happened to be standing in the lobby. That puts our body count at two, and my estimate on gallons of red-dyed corn syrup used so far is three.

00:13:47 – Cut to the next morning, and a blind man with a seeing eye dog and a fixation on the early Beatles’ wardrobe is wandering around the dance school. I need to pause right here and point out the fact that blind people really got a pretty bad rap in movies up until, say, Scent of a Woman. This dude is walking around as if he just now lost his sight: head tilted back, mouth agape, flailing around with his red and white cane (despite the placid presence of his guide dog, which you’d hope would keep him from having to whip that thing around so much). Anyway, let’s see what this dope is up to.

00:14:12 – Hah! Unintentional comedy moment number one: Blind Dude has just tied his dog up to the bike rack outside the school’s main entrance. In the seventies, you apparently could smoke your face off inside, but don’t bring your damn seeing-eye dogs in. Or maybe Blind Guy thinks he’s a cowboy, and that he’s just tied Old Silver up to the trough outside Poot’s Saloon in Tombstone. I have no idea. Actually, based on the way he’s dressed, I’d expect him to be singing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” on the Ed Sullivan Show.

00:14:32 – Suzy shows up at the school right on Blind Guy’s heels. She clearly is unperturbed by the fact that her roommate was yanked through the bedroom window and given a working-over with a set of Ginsu knives last night, because she’s sort of moseying calmly toward the door, seemingly enjoying the nice morning weather. This time, she doesn’t screw with the intercom, and just heads right in.

00:15:22 – Inside is a blue atrium filled with students and instructors. One of the instructors is a severe-looking woman who inexplicably has the mouth of Ed McMahon. She introduces herself as Miss Tanner, and asks Suzy why she didn’t show up the night before. After Suzy explains the locked-door-and-hostile-woman-on-the-intercom situation, Tanner apologizes and takes Suzy over to meet Madame Blanc, the vice-directress. “She was a very famous ballerina,” Tanner explains toothily. Blanc is an older woman in what looks like a 1940s cocktail gown, who is talking with three guys in suits.

00:15:38 – Blanc’s first impression of Suzy seems good, if creepy: “You’re pretty. Very pretty,” she says. Suzy actually looks a lot like Marian Ravenwood from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Different actresses, though. As it turns out, the guys she’s speaking to are police officers, who are investigating the rather elaborate deaths that went on last night. I may have screwed this up, because Suzy seems to not know anything about the death whatsoever – only that she saw a girl running away from the school that night. I guess the two who died were both students… anyway, Suzy’s at the school, and Tanner takes her for a tour.

00:17:45 – The molarific Miss Tanner explains that the school doesn’t teach students to dance, because the assumption is that they already know how. During this conversation, a large servant passes them on the stairs. His name is Pavlo, and he might be the brother of Sloth from The Goonies. Apparently, he’s the general handyman at the school, and it’s perfectly acceptable for students to tell him how horrible he looks, because he only speaks Romanian. Pavlo looks a little crestfallen at this explanation from Tanner (but who can tell for sure? He looks like he’s capable of maybe three distinct expressions). He’s high on the Obvious List of possible dancer-slicers.

00:19:02 – Tanner shows Suzy to the locker room, where the other students are getting ready for class or something. Tanner tells Suzy to borrow a pair of shoes from someone who has two pairs. After she leaves, one of the students saunters over to Suzy and introduces herself as Olga, in a distinctly American accent. Apparently, she’s who Suzy is going to be rooming with off-campus. She seems to be out of her mind, and after Suzy meets another student, Sara, Olga observes that names that begin with the letter “S” are the names of snakes. “Sssss! Ssss! Ssssss!” she hisses. I guess now we know why this one wasn’t up for the Oscar in ’77.

00:23:29 – Back at Olga’s place, Suzy finds her room. An Italian guy – also a student, apparently – brings up her suitcases. He’s apparently got to get back to the school, since he lives on campus and “can’t be late for supper.”

00:23:39 – At the school, students are dancing ballet steps all over the place. Wonderful.

00:24:59 – Madame Blanc shows up and tells Suzy that her room at the school is ready, and free of charge. Suzy says she’d rather stay with Olga, and after some attempt at coercing her to change her mind, Blanc tells her it’s her choice. After the brief exchange, Miss Tanner creeps up behind Suzy and says, “I had no idea you were so strong-willed. I see that when you have made up your mind, nothing will change your decision. My compliments.” She grins, and I think she should be holding a giant Publisher’s Clearing House check.

00:25:46 – On her way down the hall after class, Suzy runs into a strange old woman polishing a crystal, as Madame Blanc’s odd little nephew stands by. As the woman polishes the crystal, it begins to glint, and suddenly it glows white, stunning Suzy. The lights go all weird, and Suzy manages to continue down the hall – looking as if she’s about to barf.

00:27:42 – At her next ballet class shortly afterwards, Suzy tells Sarah she’s feeling a little weak. She lets the grinning Miss Tanner know, who tells her to try the step anyway. The blind Beatle from earlier turns out to be the school’s piano player. Instead of wearing the normal sunglasses, he’s got what look like a pair of welding shades on, and he still looks like he’s just getting used to being blind. Suzy tries to dance along, but passes out – with bright red blood seeping from her nose and mouth. Why is it that horror movie blood looks nothing like actual blood? I mean, this stuff looks like red paint – which is probably what it is. Couldn’t they make it darker? And do I need professional help for this?

00:30:35 – Suzy’s taken to her room in the school – ah, so it was all a plot to have her move in! – where Miss Tanner is forcing her to drink water out of a crystal jug. The weird old lady is in the room, arranging Suzy’s possessions, which apparently Olga was kind enough to bring by. The doctor – if he is a doctor – says she’ll need some time in bed, plus plenty of peace, quiet, and bland food.

00:32:17 – Oh, and wine. Apparently, the professor – who is also some kind of doctor – has told Suzy that wine will be a part of her diet, because it “builds up the blood.” It’s constantly amazing to me how social attitudes toward alcohol have changed so much in the past couple decades. You watch a movie from the ‘70s or before, and alcohol was this ubiquitous thing that everybody just had as part of their daily lives. Now, anyone in a popular movie who drinks is usually a sad, sad case. The moral of the story? Well, apparently our parents were total drunks.

00:33:33 – Gross. Suzy has just found worms or maggots or something in her hair.

00:33:51 -- …which apparently dropped from the ceiling, which is covered with them. Gross, again.

00:35:33 – The maggots apparently were coming from a crate of food in the attic, which, Madame Blanc explains later, was ordered from what they believed was a reliable source. The story is that the food spoiled and drew the flies, which then dropped the maggots down through the cracks and onto the school’s shrieking female population.

--:--:-- — Okay, I don’t care if this movie is a horror classic. It sucks. That, plus pausing it every minute or so to write up my own commentary makes it take about three times as long to watch. I’ve had it. Just so you know, the dance school turns out to be a front for a coven of witches. Nothing else gets explained, you never find out who the killer is, and Suzy kills the big bad witch at the end. Oh, and the stupid piano player gets killed by his own seeing-eye dog.

The lesson I’m taking away from this is that the Italians should keep to making pasta, fast cars, and Coliseums. Leave the horror movies to the U.S. – they’re more our speed, anyway.

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Epic blockbuster dream of the summer

2008-04-19T08:04:00.002-04:00

I woke up this morning after having a remarkably Michael Bay sort of dream -- there was something about huge alien spaceships crawling out of the water and abducting people and performing experiments on them, but the experiments were more social than physical. For example, I think in one of them, the aliens (who I never saw, it was all robots) gave abductees whatever addictive substance they wanted. People would go aboard and get offered beers or heroin.

The weirdest part was that the whole thing seemed like it was shot like a summer action movie. There were wide establishing shots, and images from the sky of the space ships causing huge tsunamis in the cities where they came ashore. I'm pretty sure there was a closeup shot of Will Smith standing on a golf course saying, "Oh, shit" at one point.

The other day, I was talking with a close friend of mine about how intolerable long, drawn-out dream stories are. I remember hearing Greg Behrednt talking about it (this was back when he was a comedian, before he took a job as daytime company on television for housewives and shut-ins). He said there are two kinds of stories you probably want to think long and hard before telling: the dog/pet story ("Unless part of the story is that your dog started speaking Spanish, you might not want to tell that story") and the dream story. His point was good -- that dreams are amazing, they can be spectacular or horrifying, and they can leave you reeling.

"Here's the thing about dreams, though -- they didn't really happen," Behrednt said, pointing out that this is another kind of story you generally don't want to hear from other people, so you should avoid telling them yourself.

I think he was right, but I think it's more applicable to that kind of dream storytelling that involves a lot of time and explication. I mean, dreams (at least mine, anyway) rarely make sense in a narrative format... it's not as if your subconscious pays much attention to story arcs or the value of sensible conclusions.

But I think you can get away with a very abbreviated version of the dream story without making whoever's listening start plotting an escape route. Basically, you say something like, "I had this really weird dream about oranges last night," or, "I had this crazy nightmare about monsters breaking in and stealing all my coffee last night." If you leave it at that, nobody's going to feel too awkward and the ones who are actually interested might indicate the fact that they're willing to hear more by asking questions like, "Really? What kind of monsters?"

I broke that rule in this post, but at least I kept it to two paragraphs. So don't whine.

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The Trollenberg Terror

2008-04-08T23:54:00.003-04:00

A while back, I decided to watch "The Trollenberg Terror," a cheesy 1950s horror movie that was alternately titled "The Crawling Eye" -- the second title is also the title of a Misfits song off Famous Monsters, and it gives way too much of the movie away.

Anyway, here's as far as I made it through a minute-by-minute "live blog" of the movie-watching experience.

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Greetings, sports fans.

For tonight’s entry in my neglected blog, I’m going to be watching “The Trollenberg Terror,” a 1958 movie also commonly known as “The Crawling Eye.”

I’m not exactly sure what to expect – here’s what I know, though. “The Trollenberg Terror” was directed by Quentin Lawrence and involves mysterious and hideous alien creatures taking up residence in a radioactive cloud at the top of Trollenberg Mountain in Switzerland. Mayhem and carnage ensue. There’s talk of some psychic chick who has an inside track to the aliens – but this is just me going off the Misfits song, “Crawling Eye,” from Famous Monsters.

Let’s begin!

The opening screen is a message from the British Board of Film Censors, and certifies that the film is okay for display as long as no one less than 16 years old is present. Apparently, the Crawling Eye predates the MPAA – I’m not yet sure which is more horrible, though.

00:00:39 – A rather beautiful panning shot of the Swiss Alps. There are some mountain climbers on one of the mountains.

00:01:40 – The two climbers are calling to their buddy Jimmy, off-screen. He says someone’s coming. His pals ask if it’s the abominable snowman. Jimmy screams and falls off the mountain hilariously.

00:02:09 – Fortunately, Jimmy has been secured to his pals by a climbing rope, which they use to haul him back up to their level. Unfortunately, he’s dead anyway. We don’t get to see what exactly has happened to him, but his arm is bloody and his friend in the white knit cap screams “NO!” when he catches a glimpse of him. The rope frays and breaks, and poor ol’ Jim takes the quick way down the mountain. Aliens – 1, Humans – 0.

00:02:18 – An interesting discussion between the two remaining climbers: “You idiot, we almost had him! Why did you let go?” “Didn’t you see him? His head – it was torn off!” Seems like that would have been the first thing they’d both notice. Decapitation isn’t exactly a minor detail.

00:02:20 – Cut to a train racing through the mountains. Credits roll, accompanied by a stereotypical “high tension” orchestral score.

00:03:57 – We’re back on the train, and we’re meeting some travelers -- a mother, who I’m going to assume for the moment is named Betty Crocker, and her daughter Anne, who, according to Betty, was talking in her sleep right before we made it into their train compartment. An old guy with a horrible perm is sitting across from them, reading a newspaper.

00:04:43 – Hey, wait a minute here. Maybe they’re not mother and daughter. Anne seems to be at least a teenager, and Betty Crocker suddenly appears to be in her 20s. Sisters, maybe?

00:04:57 – Anne faints and falls into Old Creep’s newspaper.

00:05:14 – …but she recovers quickly, and is completely unalarmed by waking up lying in an old dude’s lap. He introduces himself as “Alan Brooks.” A likely story. Anne introduces herself as Anne Pilgrim, and clues us into the fact that the other woman is her sister, Sarah. Sorry, Sarah – at first I thought you were her mom.

00:05:40 – Mr. Brooks helps out by giving Anne a shot from his clearly well-used flask. Man, the ‘50s were awesome.

00:06:10 – The conductor announces that the next stop for the train is Trollenberg. Although Sarah has said the two are on their way to Geneva, Anne immediately takes interest in Trollenberg, stating that she can’t go any further and that’s where they’ll be stopping. Brooks, conveniently, is also stopping there. Anne says they can stay at the Hotel Europa. At this point, I’m pretty sure Anne is the psychic chick.

00:06:56 – The party has arrived in Trollenberg and met a buddy of Mr. Brooks’, a wacky Swiss guy who apparently runs the Europa. He agrees to lodge the Pilgrims without notice, and alludes vaguely to how this is normally a busy time of year, but not this season…

00:07:52 – Brooks offers the girls cigarettes while the Swiss dude drives them to the hotel. There’s a discussion about how climbers disappear into the mist and are never seen again. The party disembarks the car in front of an incredibly fake mountain backdrop. Inside the hotel, there’s a guy smoking his face off while a drinking beer. It’s Philip Truscott, who apparently has been expecting Brooks. He thinks the Pilgrims’ name rings a bell, and the women head up to their room.

00:09:46 – Anne looks out her window at Mount Trollenberg and seems to know all the details about the area. She gets scared and asks Sarah, “Why does it seem like I’ve seen it all before?” Why would Sarah know, you crazy wench?

00:11:12 – Truscott stops by Brooks’ room and asks if he’s a climber, and Brooks says not if he can help it. Truscott helpfully observes that Trollenberg is an odd place to come for vacation if you aren’t a mountain climber, and notices that Brooks is packing a revolver. Truscott launches into a creepy discussion about Anne and Sarah being attractive girls, and offers to buy Brooks a drink later on. Truscott leaves, but Brooks overhears him talking on the hall phone shortly after, asking a friend to check on an “Alan Brooks, 40, American.” Brooks dramatically removes his horn-rimmed glasses, squints, then heads downstairs.

00:12:52 – Holy shit, people in the ‘50s were total drunks. Brooks runs into two mountain climbers, Duratt and Brett, in the lobby who are about to head off to climb up Trollenberg. They inform him that they’re going to have a “noggin” before they head up, and that they’re going to need a bottle of brandy for the trip. I don’t know about you guys, but personally, I always get smashed before I try to climb any mountains more than a mile high. Brooks agrees to join them for a nip and orders up a Scotch.

00:13:34 – Sarah and Truscott show up, and Duratt orders them drinks. He explains that it’s his first mountain climb, and that he’s a geologist. Truscott advises the climbers to keep an eye on their rope, and brings up the guys who were climbing around in the opening scene. “Nasty business,” everyone agrees.

00:14:53 – Truscott said some guides found the bodies of “Jimmy” and his pals, and that even though the official story is that the young climber had been decapitated by his climbing rope, the rope had actually been found around his waist, still tied – which apparently would make it impossible to loop around his neck. This is all as per Hans, the bartender, who’s busy being mysterious and cryptic while getting everyone shitfaced. Truscott prods Hans to tell the party what the villagers are saying – which is that the decapitation happened before his fall.

00:15:41 – Brooks follows the two drunk climbers up to the observatory in the cable car. They have some discussion about chemical changes within rocks on their way up, which doesn’t sound even remotely scientific.

00:16:41 – The observatory. Nutty professors are looking out through telescopes, and “The Professor” is busily scribbling notes in a pad. He’s irritated at first when one of his lab-coat-wearing flunkies tells him there’s someone at the door to see him, but changes his tune and becomes excited when he learns that it’s Alan Brooks. I think the professor is drunk, too.

00:17:52 – The professor shows Brooks a bank of screens, which are off. He turns them on, and they display views of the mountain. “You see? Television cameras on the roof. We watch everything!” he exclaims, then promptly turns the monitors back off. He’s definitely drunk.

00:18:35 – The professor brags about how his equipment is all very expensive, and that it’s to study “cosmic rays.”

00:20:08 – The accidents are discussed again, and the professor says remains are never found. This seems to be in direct contradiction to the villagers' discovery of Jimmy's decapitated body, but who's really keeping score? He also mentions a radioactive cloud that seems to be hanging around the side of Mount Trollenberg. The two discuss “an incident” that took place three years prior, in the Andes.

00:22:31 – “Climbers on the Trollenberg!” one of the lab coat flunkies shouts. It’s our besotted buddies from the hotel, Duratt and Brett.

00:24:00 – Back in the observatory, Brooks and the professor disagree over whether to go to the authorities. Something fishy is up, but Brooks wants hard facts before he sticks his neck out again, which apparently is what happened in the Andes. Meanwhile, the two wino-geologists have made it to the cabin a ways up the Trollenberg.

---

That's as far as I made it. I watched the rest of the movie, and surely enough, there are aliens, they're basically gargantuan eyeballs with tentacles, there's a confrontation, and the good guys win. Everyone drinks copiously. The end.

Check it out -- it's definitely entertaining.

Trial

2008-01-31T07:37:00.000-05:00

Today is the fourth day in the murder trial for a local woman accused of drowning her 2-year-old niece last May. As the paper's courts & cops guy, I'm providing continuing coverage of the proceedings, which are scheduled to go on for two weeks.

Naturally, it's been horrific from the word go. The little girl, who was wearing a "Dora The Explorer" outfit the day she drowned, suffered a ghastly series of injuries -- her lungs were full of fluid (indicative of a "wet drowning," someone who's been trapped underwater), she had serious bruises to her face and neck, and evidence of sexual abuse was also found on her body.

So there's no way this was going to be the kind of event where someone can sort of blithely go about his business while attending. But on the other hand, I can't say I'm much more comfortable with the morbid fascination involved in covering the case. There are two elements to this: my own interest in the case, which has been piqued by hearing details at the rate of a few per day, and the interest of the paper's readership, which I am representing by continuing my coverage of the trial.

It's not like I'm alone in the public seats in the county court room. There are press people from local TV channels and other newspapers, and while I have yet to see the local radio news DJ, I hear he's at least been cribbing details from the newspapers to include in his daily local news broadcasts.

The whole proceeding reminds me of what scientists call "The Observer Effect." The idea is that the very act of observing any phenomena changes that which is being observed.

In this case, you have a woman accused of multiple counts of second-degree murder and sex abuse. By writing about the trial and connecting her name to the charges and developing details of the case, it seems like I'm condemning her before the jury has rendered their eventual decision.

But other than including material from her defense counsel's cross-examinations (and, eventually, the witnesses he calls to the stand), how else am I supposed to write about it? It's a public proceeding, sure... but does constant, every day coverage of the event deny the defendant the right to a fair trial in the vaunted "court of public opinion"?

It's an academic question -- I've already put on my tie (double-Windsor, thank you... none of that clubhouse slipknot nonsense) and in a few minutes I'll be heading off in the Reichswagen and driving down to Ithaca to hear the third day of prosecution testimony.

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Somewhat big things I've not gotten around to mentioning

2008-01-26T18:37:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting process, leaving the military behind (mostly) and adapting to my new life as a civilian working man.

For the first several months after I got home, I did pretty much nothing. There were a couple trips, a few attempts at freelance projects, but I've got little to show for it. There are a few reasons for that, but I think the main one was my natural inclination toward indolence.

Of course, that was only temporary, and by November, I was becoming frantic to get out of the house and be doing something.

In December, I applied for and accepted a position as a staff reporter for my local newspaper. I'm now Cortland's police beat reporter, which is a very interesting assignment. The copy is often very by rote, but I'm learning a lot about civics and the legal process, and the pace at a daily newspaper is a lot more intense than it's been at any of the weekly or bi-weekly papers I worked for in the Army.

Anyway, last week I finally got around to replacing the decimated Road Shark. I don't have a name for my new ride yet, but here it is:

It's a 2001 Volkswagen Jetta GLS, which isn't exactly the road master the Z28 was, but it's got a lot of pickup and by my shaky figuring, insurance costs about a third of what it did for the Camaro. It's silver, like the Camaro was, so I think of the Jetta as the Road Shark's brainier and less-athletic little brother.

So that deals with the latest major updates in my life. I'll tackle something more interesting next time around.

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Monkey brains used to control Japanese robots

2008-01-19T10:44:00.000-05:00

By now, I think it's pretty much common knowledge that humanity is going to be wiped off the face of the Earth by one of the following catastrophes:

- Zombie outbreak
- Germ pandemic
- Sentient robots who decide to overthrow their meatbag creators

Well, scientists at Duke University have brought us at least one step closer to the third possibility. They've stuck probes into the brains of rhesus monkeys and used the monkeys' thoughts to control robots walking around in Japan.

"They can walk in complete synchronization," said Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, who also is the Anne W. Deane Professor of Neuroscience at Duke. "The most stunning finding is that when we stopped the treadmill and the monkey ceased to move its legs, it was able to sustain the locomotion of the robot for a few minutes -- just by thinking -- using only the visual feedback of the robot in Japan."
Implanted electrodes gathered feedback from brain cells of two rhesus monkeys as they walked forward and backward at different paces on a treadmill. Sensors on the monkeys' legs tracked walking patterns while researchers used math models to analyze the relationship between leg movement and activity in the brain's motor and sensory cortex. From there, researchers in North Carolina and Japan determined how well brain cell activity predicted speed and stride.

It's hard to know whether to laugh or to shriek in terror at this development. On the one hand, monkeys are hilarious and always good for a chuckle or two, but on the other, scientists are hooking up electrodes to fucking monkey brains and allowing the monkeys to control robots!

The thing about scientific research is that the vast majority of it is incredibly boring and only meaningful to scientists. That's okay, though, because the scientists are generally benevolent and using their collected data to solve problems faced by humanity, such as how to create the perfect artificial papaya flavoring.

Then you get scientists like the ones on this Duke team, who seem to be hell-bent on bringing on the apocalypse. I can just imagine what's next -- monkeys telepathically controlling Predator drones and Abrams tanks, which will plow over the surface of the planet searching out the terrified human population and committing wanton slaughter.

You read it here first -- 10 years from now, we'll be facing the Robot-Monkey-Zombie apocalypse. When it happens, you won't be able to say you haven't been warned.

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Fear and Loathing in the Mystery Machine

2008-01-18T20:17:00.000-05:00

Being the devout Hunter S. Thompson fan I am, I don't normally take kindly to parody of the man or, especially, his writing.

That said, Fear and Loathing in the Mystery Machine might be one of the funniest damn things I've ever read. The premise, such as it is, is that Hanna-Barbera decided to include Raoul Duke as a guest in an episode of Scooby-Doo.

I don't know if I ever saw a Scooby-Doo episode where the guest wasn't either Vincent Price or the Harlem Globetrotters, but The Good Doctor seems like he would have been a good fit.

A couple excerpts:

We were ten minutes south of San Clemente when the putrid green daisy walls of the van started closing in. I recall the fat four-eyed lesbian sweater girl saying something like "are you okay, Mr. Duke? We've got a mystery to solve..." when suddenly the gullet of the garish chartreuse steel beast began to spasm, as if a digestive track readying itself to vomit. I began clawing at my hamstrings and when I turned my head I was looking into the irridescent eyes of a grotesque animal screeching "Ruh Roh! Ruh Roh!" in a hoarse irritating dog-accented gibberish. That's when it things began to turn weird.

The team heads down to Mexico on a special mission...

Hanna and Barbera liked my story on hormone doping at the '72 Laff-a-Lympics and proposed that I cover a Harlem Globetrotters game at a haunted Aztec pyramid in Mexico. They called me to their offices in Burbank. "Jesus Christ, you're killing us here, Duke," Hanna complained when I demanded a $1500 advance for the project. "I've got expenses," I said. They relented and arranged for a chirpy entourage to escort me into the belly of the beast. There was the lesbian chick, the blond Palos Verdes neck scarf Nixon boy and his frigid miniskirt girlfriend, the gawky soul patch hippie kid and his paranoid Great Dane. Lost Manson kids all, Squeakies and Leslies and a canine Tex in a puke green van hoping for some Mexican helter skelter. All the better reason to pack a few guns, I thought.

Check it out. Laughs all around.

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Obstacles on the career path

2008-01-13T14:46:00.001-05:00

To a certain extent, my enjoyment of working in the journalism field is tied to the fact that I get to put my name on top of the articles I write, and then get paid for it. There's a low level of some kind of celebrity involved in being a working reporter, regardless of how small or obscure the publication is that one works for.

That said, I'm nowhere near the "big leagues" occupied by the Important Journalists who have become household names. There's a vast and yawning chasm between my job and that of, say, a Bob Woodward or Christopher Hitchens. They are, and I think deservingly, the "rock stars" of the journalism business.

Whereas, I'm currently something like the fourth violin in some backwater philharmonic.

How does one make the leap from this low, entry-level position to that exalted talking-Beltway-head status? Apparently, there are a few requirements, but several ways to go about pulling it off.

To use the above examples, there's Mr. Woodward, who by all accounts took the traditional route to fame and quiet fortune -- working his way up through the Washington Post hierarchy and being fortunate enough to be involved in what was perhaps the biggest tip of the 20th century. While Watergate was certainly a career-defining moment for Mr. Woodward, one can't ignore the fact that he's also an incredibly diligent reporter.

Hitchens, on the other hand, while also serving as a reporter and foreign correspondent, seems to have rocketed to fame by aligning himself with certain political activist groups and by writing things that are hugely unpopular -- such as his remonstrations of people like Ghandi, Ronald Reagan, Mother Teresa, and God.

The fact that Hitchens is also an accomplished scholar and rhetorician shouldn't be forgotten, it's notable that other famous "journalists" have acquired at least similar levels of fame without the erudition or study that he has. Ann Coulter, the lawyer-turned-slime-spewing-harpy for the GOP, is probably near the top of that list.

So if certain levels of fame and renown are the goal, how should one set about determining a career path? There are a few immediate things to put on the "to-do" list:

- Accumulate various unrelated degrees, such as law, political science, or anthropology; anything that adds letters to one's suffix will apparently do;
- Take up several controversial positions and loudly denounce everyone who thinks differently.

On this second point, I don't mean to automatically discredit or brush away all of the positions taken up by writers I've mentioned here so far. To be sure, I think Hitchens has excellent arguments and bases for even his least-popular ideas. However, I'm not sure that his star would have risen to the heights it has if he hadn't been noticed for thinking things that a lot of people find shocking, and I'm absolutely positive that Coulter wouldn't have a career at all if it wasn't for her rather disgusting propensity to revile and insult people who are generally considered undeserving of such abuse. Things like that, it seems, make people sit up and take notice.

(I'll note here that re-reading the last paragraph, I'm regretful to have mentioned both Hitchens and Coulter in the same breath -- I'd hate for anyone to think I consider the two comparable in any way, shape, or form, other than for the fact that they're both noted political writers. Hitchens is a well-spoken, well-educated scholar who is willing to go on the attack; Coulter is a stupid brute whose published work bespeaks a seriously underdeveloped mind that might be more at home with similar chimps in front of the large black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Anyway, I've got at least half of my to-do list planned -- I'm hoping to earn a master's in political science within the next two years. Now, all I need is a few controversial positions. So far, I've only come up with one, which I hardly really believe myself: that the Beatles were an overrated group of average musicians whose catalog of music is at least half-full of songs that are actually very embarrassing on reexamination.

I don't think that's going to be enough to rocket me into journalistic stardom, though, so I'm going to have to spend some more time at the drawing board.

My problem is, I think, that the more I try to learn about current events, the more I'm faced with what I'm now convinced are glaring and inexcusable holes in my education. I never learned anything about the period between 1950 and 1980, for example, in any educational setting, save for a few scraps about the Vietnam war.

That makes it tricky to really feel confident about any ideas I have about the Middle East or Africa, which have been practically left out of any history curricula I've received. I do know that the more I learn -- on my own, that is -- about those two areas, the less I realize that I know. A little additional education, as it turns out, can be intellectually crippling; unless, that is, one undertakes to learn the whole kit and kaboodle. And who's got time for that?

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Last post, 2007

2007-12-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

Well, 2007 certainly hasn't been a great year for blogging here at A Healthy Alternative to Work. But it's been a pretty eventful one for me, personally.

Here's a partial list of Big Things that have happened this year:

- Turned 27, was reminded of creeping mortality
- Won first place for commentary in the Army's Keith L. Ware journalism competition
- Finished my enlistment in the Army, joined New York National Guard
- Moved home to Cortland, New York, after five years of sojourning the wilds of South Korea and Kentucky
- Hung around doing pretty much nothing for a few months
- Was hired at the local newspaper as police beat reporter

Later today, I'm going to be driving down to D.C. to attend Scythian's New Year's Eve bash, "A Mad, Mad Masquerade." They're throwing it in the historic Carnegie Library, and everyone will be dressed to the nines and wearing masks. I need to find one of those, come to think of it. Anyone know where to find a Zorro mask on December 31?

Anyway, I'd promise to do a write up of the party later for this blog, but every time I do something like that, I never follow through. So maybe there'll be something -- but there probably won't. Check back here in three weeks or something.

In the meantime, enjoy your New Year's plans.

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Mike Huckabee loves the baby Jesus

2007-12-10T11:49:00.000-05:00

Mike Huckabee says that the reason we have so much government is because there's too much sin in our country. And that's because as a country, we've turned away from The Savior.

It doesn't bother me when someone proclaims things like this on the nightly "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" variety show called "The 700 Club." But Huckabee is vying for the Republican presidential nomination, and is already a state governor.

Just like the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are wont to do, Huckabee has used tragedy (his being the recent mass shootings) as a springboard to advance his ignorance of the first amendment and the establishment clause:

"Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does," Huckabee said. "Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed."

Again, I don't have a problem with Huckabee's personal beliefs. He's free to believe (at least for the time being) whatever he wants. He probably nodded assent when Robertson and Falwell blamed Sept. 11 on feminists and lesbians. But what's scary is that he's proudly trumpeting these beliefs while on the campaign trail, which seems to indicate that he's got an audience eager to hear him -- an audience of people who really don't think there should be any separation of Church and State. These are people who have no idea what religious freedom means.

But they'll vote. And this is how they'll vote: "I believe in Jesus. Mike Huckabee believes in Jesus. I'm voting for Mike Huckabee!"

This is not a mentality that's worked well, historically.

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My problems with religion

2007-12-07T00:17:00.000-05:00

Growing up, Catholicism was a very important part of my life, and I think I'm right in thinking that faith had a very influential hand in my development into who I am now.

However, over the last couple years, I've done a lot of thinking about it, and I've fallen away from belief. This hasn't been borne out of a convenience or distaste for attending Mass -- it's more based on some very deep and important questions that I believe are left unanswered by Catholicism in particular and religion in general.

These questions might be better termed catastrophic philosophical errors -- because in a few cases, they are mutually exclusive postulations that are both required to be true in order for religion (particularly Christianity) to have any merit whatsoever. So here we go with two I feel are most important and foundational:

I: The Concept of Original Sin and Salvation through the self-sacrifice of Christ

Christianity holds that all of man is cursed with "Original sin" due to the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Creation story. Since humanity is all presumably the offspring of that first couple, it is held that everyone must be sacramentally baptized in order to be cleansed of that stain and thereby gain eligibility for eternal reward.

Additionally, it is due to Jesus Christ's sacrifice of himself that my temporal sins can be forgiven.

The problem with the first idea should be readily apparent. While the ancient Jewish tribes did not believe in any real afterlife, they did believe in a sort of trans-generational karma, whereby the good or bad deeds of a man (women rarely figured into such ethical calculus) would positively or negatively affect the livelihoods of his offspring.

This belief has been discarded by Christians -- except in the case of so-called "original sin." In order to believe in original sin, one must accept the idea that one person's actions, good or bad, have a spiritual impact on his or her progeny.

By any objective ethical standard, this is ludicrous. If my father were to deliberately disobey the rules of the Church in some way, I would not be punished for his "sin." And if I were, it would not absolve him of his own culpability for it.

Similarly, it is ethically ridiculous to believe that it would require the self-sacrifice of another person (albeit the son of God in human form) to absolve me of any sins I should commit 2,000 years after the fact. Were God really inclined to A) innumerate the sins of humanity and hold them guilty for them, and B) offer absolution from the same, it would not require him to send a son to die on a cross in a middle eastern backwater in order to do so. He could simply do it.

Christianity wants to have it both ways, but can't: Either I am accountable for my actions and my actions alone, or I am not.

II: Divine Providence versus Free Will

Another perennial problem for Christianity are the mutually-exlusive postulations that 1) God is all-knowing and is aware of the past, present, and future all at once and therefore knows the outcome of all of time and that 2) man possesses free will.

This is problematic, because if someone -- including God -- knows for a fact and has seen that I am going to pick a red shirt to wear tomorrow, then when I ultimately choose that shirt, I have only made what feels like a choice to me. If the outcome has already been seen, then any choice I have in the matter is illusory.

So, either the future can be known, or I can have free will. It cannot be both.

Over and over, I've heard Christian apologists try to address this very quandary (Augustine wrestled with it in Confessions) by way of various analogies. Tonight, I heard a priest use the concept of a film strip -- as temporal beings, we can only be aware of what is happening around us immediately, in the frame of film we are currently in. God, however, can see the entire film at once, and is aware of how things will eventually unfold.

This metaphor actually serves better to underline the serious philosophical problem rather than solve it. I've seen The Godfather Part II many times, and every time, Fredo Corleone gets shot in a rowboat toward the end. Never once have I seen Michael's weak brother do a thing to change the way his fate unfolds and avoid his pathetic death on Lake Tahoe.

The point is that characters in a film reel have no choices, and if they did, it would require breaks and branches in the film. And if there were breaks and branches in a film reel, then no one could know which ending was going to result in any particular viewing -- it would depend on the choices the characters made at each branch.

So, if time is truly like a film reel, then it is true -- human beings do not possess real free will and any choices we make are illusory. If this is the case, then striving to be good is futile, since our fates are already known by an Almighty who is allegedly willing to damn us to an eternity of torture for simply following the path he so wisely set out for us. This would also make intercessory prayer ridiculous, because changing the future would be impossible if it is already known.

If this is not the case, then God does not know the future and we can't really be sure of any prophecies we've ever been provided with, since God would apparently be giving us his best guess at an outcome that even he could not yet see, since it does not yet exist.

Personally, I think the second case is more likely, but since so many people are so attached to the Bible, I doubt it'll ever gain much mass appeal.

I'm not trying to be blasphemous or to denigrate anyone for their own faith. I am well aware that people much more intelligent than I am have had very strong faiths... but I cannot be so dishonest with myself as to pretend to believe something when these seemingly deal-breaking problems exist in the faith that's been set out before me to believe.

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I'm a crummy writer when I don't have deadlines

2007-12-03T17:41:00.000-05:00

Not really a crummy writer -- just an incurable procrastinator. Without a strict deadline, I don't seem to ever get around to writing anything. Even despite my excitement over the prospect of the music piece I'm working on, it's been incredibly hard to actually sit down and write it. In fact, in stead of simply bearing down and cranking it out, I went out and bought a bunch of needless upgrades for my computer and workstation -- a new chair, more RAM, a flatscreen monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse... apparently anything in order to put off the task of actually writing.

I don't know why that is. I do know that the piece is daunting, but that's never stalled me to the point of paralysis before. I suppose part of it is the fear that whatever I come up with is going to disappoint me -- and, by extension, anyone who reads it.

There's just so many things I want to address and capture. I've taken a writing course or two in the past, and one of the first things they'll inevitably tell you (after they get the tired old saw "Good writing is re-writing" out of the way) is that you need to limit the scope of whatever you're writing to something manageable. This is very good advice when you're putting a term paper together, but I have serious doubts as to whether that was on Jack Kerouac's mind when he wrote "On The Road."

Organizing my thoughts, here are what I need to cover in the story, in no particular order other than the one they occur to me in as I write this list:

- The history of the band
- Character studies of each member and the tenant characters
- The sound of the band
- The narrative of the week I spent with them
- My own reflections on what it's like to see an old friend making it in the music business
- Various rantings about how roots music is better, and is unjustly relegated to a corner of a music business that has been hijacked by hucksters and charlatans.

Now that I look at it, that's a tidy little list (other than the prevailing vagueness that characterizes the last half). Can that be done in 15,000 or 20,000 words, and then sold to a major-market magazine?

Maybe, maybe not. It can certainly be written, and in that case, at the very least I'll have come up with something that recalls an amazing time of my own life and provides a snapshot of sorts of life as a traveling Celtic-gypsy musician.

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New layout, plus Diggable posts!

2007-11-13T13:52:00.000-05:00

"A Healthy Alternative to Work" was getting a bit clunky, and, let's face it -- outdated.

So, a healthy two years behind the power curve, I've redesigned (read: used Blogger 2.0's new, fancy software to start over) my site. I've also added a Digg button, which should appear at the top right corner of every post -- each of these buttons will submit the associated entry to Digg.com, and hopefully gain fame and fortune for me on the Innernets. It should be noted here that I did not come up with the code for this button, either -- I just followed the directions of bloggers more tech-savvy than me.

In other news, check out Enough of this Palaver, a discussion blog for Adam and myself to hammer out ideas in. We're trying to figure out who the best American rock band is right now.

I'm also working on a fairly sizable freelance project at the moment -- an in-depth piece on Scythian, who I followed around for a week not long ago. I've got hours of recorded interviews and a boatload of scribbled notes, so I'm hoping to get 12,000-20,000 words out of this one. It's a turned out to be a bit of a beast in terms of organization, but I'm hoping the end result is informative, funny, deeply stirring, and poignant. And three out of four ain't bad.

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Impasse

2007-10-24T01:15:00.000-04:00

Two ACLU lawyers have written a book called Administration of Torture, which purportedly draws on more than 100,000 pages of recently-released government documents (obtained by the authors after several years' worth of Freedom of Information Act requests) to paint a rather damning picture of the Bush Administration's attitude toward the use of "torture" techniques in the so-called War on Terror.

Meanwhile, American law enforcement and espionage agencies have been exercising their USA PATRIOT ACT-expanded powers to conduct what would have been anathema in ages past: spying on U.S. citizens through warrantless wiretapping and Internet monitoring -- all in the name of preventing terrorism.

These are two examples of ongoing arguments that no one will ever win.

Here's the problem: both sides on both arguments are utterly convinced of the validity of their own understanding of the issue. And neither side in either argument understands either issue in the same terms as their opponents.

I'll try to explain that a little better by using the first example. I haven't read Administration of Torture yet, but Americans have been discussing the issue of our use of "high-stress interrogation techniques" since the first photos from Abu Ghraib hit the press. Officially, the U.S. has repeatedly stated that it does not engage in torture -- but was very careful later when actually defining what constituted as torture.

Those who wish to take "a hard line" on terrorism usually are perfectly happy to allow the government to use whatever means necessary to extract information from a prisoner in the interest of preventing a terrorist attack. Few will admit to endorsing "torture," per se, but will dismiss specific techniques (such as "waterboarding" and "stress positions") as not amounting to actual torture. Furthermore, if we need to torture a few Afghans or Iraqis in order to save thousands of American lives, well, isn't that worth it?

But then there are those who (like me) believe that any kind of torture violates the very principle that supposedly gives the United States the moral high ground (or what's left of it) in fighting terrorism -- that America, as a nation, should act in a way that demonstrates a respect for human rights (that's human rights, not American citizens' rights, by the way). Torturing prisoners for any reason is morally abhorrent -- the ends do not justify the means.

On the second issue, I had an argument with my dad this evening over PATRIOT ACT wiretapping, and I discovered that we will never find a common ground on the issue, because we understand the rights of the individual versus the authority of government in fundamentally different ways. Dad thinks that citizens who live law-abiding lives have nothing to worry about, and that the trouble of securing warrants for domestic wiretapping allows critical communications between potential terrorists to go unheard.

On the other hand, I believe that it's more important for our Fourth Amendment rights (which guarantees freedom from unwarranted search and seizure) to be protected than to unleash our law enforcement agencies on the general public in order to chase down leads on terrorism unimpeded by silly "checks" and "balances." I think this is particularly important in a country that bills itself as "Home of the Free" while "exporting democracy" to other nations.

In other words, Dad is more comfortable trusting the government than I am (except, notably, in the case of health care), and I am more attached to my Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms than he is to his.

These concepts are absolute data for every argument that anyone's ever had regarding the war in Iraq and terrorism -- and you will never reach any kind of resolution to any discussion you have with someone who doesn't already agree with you on absolute data.

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Twelve From The Graveyard

2007-09-19T14:50:00.000-04:00

My buddy Adam is a newly-minted and unemployed lawyer and a lover of obscure music. He's re-entered the blogging world over at Twelve From The Graveyard, and I'm sure he's got a smug look on his face over the fact that only he knows what the title means. Go check him out.

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Salemonz lives

2007-09-15T18:30:00.000-04:00

It seems my old friend-turned-supervisor Salemonz has returned to blogging, now that he's settled into a more civilized life in the D.C. area. Check him out -- he's got a wealth of experience under his belt, including a tour in Iraq and lots of 46-Quebecking.

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Republican Marketing Tactics

2007-09-15T08:51:00.000-04:00

Since General David Petraeus returned from Iraq with his report on the progress made there by President George Bush's troop "surge," it's been remarkable to watch the language of Republican campaigns change to reflect the president's new goals -- which include a somewhat vague notion of reducing U.S. troop numbers in Iraq to pre-surge levels.

What's remarkable is that the G.O.P. has stolidly denounced any Democrat-led notion of reducing troop levels there as being tantamount to "admitting defeat," and that bringing the troops home "precipitously" would be conceding to "the enemy" we're supposedly fighting in Iraq. More polemical members of the legislature, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have either implied or stated explicitly that this would lead to us having to fight this ghostly enemy (one can safely assume he means al Qaeda) here at home. Vice President Dick Cheney referred to al Qaeda as "the enemy we may face" in a speech Friday in Grand Rapids, Mich.

I heard McConnell speak to a host on NPR's All Things Considered. He said that he doesn't think it's a coincidence that we haven't witnessed another terrorist attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001.

Gen. Petraeus, has been a combatant commander in Iraq more than once, including a tour (as a major general) as the commander of the 101st Airborne Division. In testimony, he warned against the kind of rapid pull-out favored by vocal Democrats, but he in turn has been accused of "cooking the books" on Iraq progress in order to support the delayed timetable that the White House seems to have begrudgingly accepted as policy.

By the White House's own report card, the Iraq government is making what would be considered a failing grade at any educational institution. Out of 18 benchmarks set by the administration in July, satisfactory progress is being made in eight of them. In eight others, progress is "unsatisfactory," and the remaining two can't be evaluated yet.

While this evaluation is still less than 90 days old, it's in keeping with the Iraq government's history thus far of being incapable of governing anything. Even with the increased troop levels (now up to around 160,000 U.S. soldiers), violence remains a definitive part of life in sectarian Iraq.

It's been accepted as read that total U.S. withdrawl from the country would result in catastrophe, but now that Republicans have decided that withdrawl is indeed necessary, we're going to be treated to some amazing lingual gymnastics from the party -- the G.O.P.'s strategy for troop pull-out will be a "carefully-considered plan for reduction in troop levels, in keeping with Gen. Petraeus' recommendations, where we still support the troops and their mission," while the Democrats' desire to pull troops back will be painted as a spineless call for unconditional surrender.

Never mind that both strategies amount to the same thing -- bringing troops back from the front lines of a "war" that the American public has lost any interest or faith in.

It's clear that the Iraq government is willing to take advantage of every dollar and uniformed body the U.S. is willing to send its way -- and demonstrating independence from that aid is a good way to have it removed. It's like in any business or bureaucracy: you have to use your entire annual budget each year (or overspend), or your budget will get cut. And no one wants their budget cut, least of all a fledgling government surrounded by bloodthirsty sectarians.

But the U.S. can't afford to continue funneling money into the country without some demonstration that the treasure and lives we're spending there is actually accomplishing something. It's time to wean Iraq from the American tit.

Nothing gets a creature moving on its own like the threat of starvation. Baby tigers figure out quickly how to catch their own dinner once their mother's milk has been taken away.

Of course, there are American companies who have it in their best interest to see hostilities continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. These include former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), which has demonstrated a level of greed and disregard for ethics I wouldn't have believed possible.

We'll see what happens, won't we?

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UPDATE: I meant to mention, in regards to Gen. Petraeus, that the top of his chain of command is the president -- the Defense Department falls under the Executive Branch, and therefore Petraeus, regardless of his long and admirable record of service, is hardly an unbiased source of information. This should be considered when weighing the content of his report against accusations of pandering to the White House's goals and objectives.

Sticky

2007-09-08T18:15:00.000-04:00

Humidity is soaring here now... I don't know what the actual figure is, and I don't know how it could be more than 100 percent, but it has to be. It's not even that hot, but sitting in my room for any length of time results in my body pouring sweat. The air feels thick to breathe, and there's an oppressive closeness in the atmosphere that is impossible to escape.

So far, I've accomplished precious little since I've been home, and this god-awful humidity isn't helping at all.

Lately, my hopes of regular employment have been dashed. That's courtesy of the National Guard.

I reported to my unit, the 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based on Hancock Field in Syracuse, last week. They were surprised to see me, and couldn't find hide nor hair of me in "The System" when they examined whatever strength roster that informs them of when new soldiers are due to arrive. But I produced my contract, discharge papers, and a whole sheaf of other identifying documents, and the strength NCO promised to look into the matter and contact me with further instructions.

In the meantime: "Go home, sit tight," he said.

Before I left the 27th's headquarters (which are squirreled away down a labyrinthine system of hallways and double doors, deep within the New York Guard's headquarters building), the headquarters company first sergeant got on the phone to tell me that he didn't want me at this weekend's drill, but that he did want me to show up next month -- for the annual two-week training period, to be held up north at Fort Drum.

Additionally, he said I could (and would) show up a couple days early for that, to earn the two-days' worth of active duty pay that I'll be missing this month. My job, the sergeants there in the personnel office conjectured, would probably be something like guarding weapons in the unit arms room, or helping load boxes to prepare for the brigade's impending deployment, scheduled for early next year.

It's not glamorous, but it's a small price to pay to keep the Golden Ticket I had written into my contract -- a 24-month stabilization guarantee, which means that when the 27th ships out, I'll be staying in New York and waving to the planes full of Real Soldiers as they take off for combat duty.

I'm sure I've mentioned my acute sense of cognitive dissonance at being called a "soldier" for the past several years. I've worn the uniform, qualified on rifle and PT, and carried out whatever orders I've been given by superiors. I've stood at attention and parade rest when necessary, saluted officers, and even carried unit flags or guidons when I've been required to. But the idea that "I am (or have been) a soldier" wasn't something I ever really actualized in my brain. Soldiers are people who go to war and shoot other soldiers. That was never something I was interested in, and it was never something I even came close to doing.

So when the rest of my guard unit leaves for The Sandbox (or the Theater, or the Quagmire, or whatever else you might call this current venture), I'm not going to feel as though I've shirked any responsibility or anything. I'm just a guy with a notepad and a camera who looks a little silly wearing camouflage.

What I meant to get at, before I launched off on that tangent, was that given the requirement for me to be at Fort Drum for the first few weeks of October, landing a job prior to that is basically impossible. I'm going to check in to doing some stringer work for the local paper, and maybe talk to a publisher I know up in Syracuse to see if he'd be interested in picking up another series of my columns. Having something specific to do would be a big help. As great as it sounds to have every day be Saturday, after a while you sort of lose any energy or motivation you had going in.

Also on the agenda, however, is to get enrolled in grad school. I'm planning on visiting my top choice on Monday, so we'll see how that pans out.

I've been losing weight, but very slowly, and it's not out of any effort taken on my part. That's another thing I've decided to change -- a workout regimen is a must, so I've decided to take up running again. Also, once I get back to town on Monday, I'm signing up for a kickboxing class... or something. Maybe some mixed-martial arts thing. I've never been a fighter, but I don't concentrate well during workouts, and I think having a training routine and concrete goals would help with that, too.

So yes, there are things I'm planning on getting done... things on the slate... I just have to start knocking them out.

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End of a chapter

2007-09-03T10:21:00.000-04:00

I'm home.

I've been here for about a month and as much time as I've spent on the computer (emailing, playing Texas Hold 'Em on Facebook), I haven't gotten around to finishing a post.

There's one in the queue about my departure from Fort Knox and the active Army, but it's a long, drawn-out narrative of my last couple days there and I ran out of steam. I guess I just didn't want to re-hash anything.

Besides, I've been readjusting to life as a civilian -- and, perhaps more importantly, to living back at my parents' home in central New York.

Over the past month it's been hard not to slip into the feeling that I'm back at square one -- that the past five years have served little but to age me and wear me down, and that after all that, I'm back at the same place I once departed from in the hopes of finding fame and fortune... or at least, weird adventures.

And I suppose the weird adventures part came true, but looking back over what I've written off-the-job since I was in Korea, they seem to fall flat. They weren't the kinds of adventures old men tell their grandchildren about by the fireside. And the three years spent at Fort Knox, well, they're filled more with regrets than with accomplishments.

At least that's how it seems sometimes. I've been clipping my articles out of the old Turrets I had kept in a cardboard box, scanning them into Acrobat files, and printing out copies I can send in to someone looking to hire a disaffected writer. Unfortunately, some of the ones I really liked are missing -- no doubt culled during a Keith L. Ware search at some point or another.

Or maybe I just neglected to save copies for myself. I've found that I have a hard time planning for the future, and I think it's because I have a hard time conceptualizing the idea of there being a future somewhere other than wherever I am. While I was working at the Turret, the idea of someday coming home was a fuzzy, vague notion that might as well have been a half-forgotten dream.

But here I am, and the Turret is behind me, as well as active duty military life, Kentucky, and a disastrous relationship that I can't seem to shake myself of completely. On that last count, it's not for lack of trying -- but evidently both parties involved need to agree to move on, and so far that hasn't happened. I'll leave it at that for now.

I've been filling my days with sporadic lawn care, comedy radio, and wandering the property -- looking out at the river or at how the sun lights up the leaf cover provided by the large maple and oak trees here. I've made a half-hearted attempt at a resume and caught up with the few friends who still are living in the area.

Yesterday I read through some of the blogs I wrote years ago while I was partying hard in Korea. It's striking how different a person I am now -- quieter, calmer, less prone to all-night drinking binges and screaming, and completely reversed on my political ideas about conservativism and America's newly-rediscovered Manifest Destiny mentality.

Maybe I've just gotten older, but maybe there's something else involved -- something about the loss of hope or idealism or joie de vivre or some-such abstract bullshit. When I find a diagnosis that seems to fit, I'll let you know.

For now, though, I'm content to relax and enjoy the balmy upstate weather as the summer ebbs away. There's a coolness to the air now, and even though the leaves have yet to turn, you can tell that fall is on the way. I have four months until the spring semester, and my plan is to be enrolled in a master's degree program in political science by then. I'm not quite sure where yet, but I need to get cracking on applying, since the deadlines seem to be somewhere around October 1.

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Getting out

2007-07-17T18:54:00.000-04:00

After an unnecessarily irritating final Tuesday at the paper here (the next two will be devoted to clearing and leaving active duty), I had an interesting exchange with a shoppette clerk as I was buying a six pack and a box of Camels.

She asked for my ID, which I produced.

"About time for a new one of these," she said, looking at the date -- August 27 of this year.

"About time for me to get out of the Army," I said, taking my card back.

"Oh, you're getting out?"

"Yeah --" I corrected myself. "-- Well, going to the National Guard."

"Wasn't the life you wanted, huh?" She asked, as she bagged my beer.

"It was what it needed to be, for as long as it needed to be," I said. "Now it's time for... well, whatever the 'next phase' is, I guess."

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Rope

2007-07-02T22:28:00.000-04:00

"Don't think you're going to get out of this."

There was a hush over the group of privates sitting in the bleachers.

"This is one of the funnest things you'll do in basic training," the sergeant barked. He spoke in a tone that commanded respect, but it was clear that he was trying to win the privates over.

I was standing in a gravel pit next to Fort Knox's confidence tower, and Staff Sgt. Daniel, a rappel master, was explaining to the incoming company what was expected of them.

When I had approached the scene, the first group from a basic training company had arrived to make sure everything was in order. I saw the first sergeant, and decided to ask if I was welcome.

"Hi, First Sergeant," I said. "I'm with the Turret."

I showed him the large camera bag I take wherever I go.

"I wanted to know if it was okay to shoot your guys going through the course," I said.

"It's okay with me," the grizzled NCO said. "Just don't shoot my guys. You can take pictures of them, though," he said.

"Fair enough," I said, pretending to laugh along with him.

"Who here is afraid of heights?" Daniel demanded of the group of around 200 trainees who had gathered in the bleachers.. About 100 arms shot up -- along with Daniel's.

He regarded the group of new recruits. They were young -- mostly -- and they stank. Word had it that the company had come to Thunderbolt Tower after two whole days in the field.... which translated to two days without a bath. The company was ripe.

But there was an Ohio Valley storm brewing. As the recruits sat in the bleachers listening to Daniel, I stood about 50 meters off, snapping photos and watching the storm front. There were black clouds approaching, and it wasn't a rainstorm. It was the kind of cloud formation that blotted out the day... the kind that made you think, "I better get inside."

Daniel had moved from the bleachers to a stand that rose about five feet above the ground. Aware of my camera, I'd ducked inside the shed that cowered under the 50-foot tower that formed the core of the "Thunderbold Confidence Tower." The trainees had all lined up and been issued lengths of rope that would become the "Swiss seat" each would use to descent the 42-foot tower that loomed over us.

You learn a lot in basic training, even though the curriculum is suitable for an easy night course. What you really learn isn't technical information -- the basic facts about being a soldier are very simple. What you learn, and what's actually valuable, is that you're capable of doing things you had once thought were impossible. That's why everyone goes through the Confidence Course.

The storm grew stronger. Light left the day, even though it was around three in the afternoon. I scrambled inside the gear shed, where a sergeant was handing out the rope equipment each recruit would need to tie a "Swiss seat;" a rappelling term for the knot formation used to keep a climber safe during a descent.

Eventually, the rain and lightening grew too heavy. We had to call the training off.

More to come.

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